I wanted to bring this story to your attention, especially in light of the most recent shooting (Sikh Temple).

Given this guy’s ties to hate groups, I’ll bet you’re more than half expecting me to rant about how this only proves right wing lunacy, but I’m not gonna do that. We know conservatives are half crazy, and we don’t need this wingnut to prove it. Let’s just say he’s a Grade-A nutter, and not focus on him. Instead, when we talk about this, and the Aurora incident, let’s spend our time focused on the victims and heroes in those tales, and mention the killer as little as we can get away with.

I’ll probably have more to say about Wisconsin later, but for now, I wanted to bring this disturbing story to your attention.

I’ve been doing research for an extensive and quirky article series here, and in doing so, I came across the notion of self replicating machines. That is to say, a 3d printer that can be used to re-create all its own parts. So the idea is, you buy your first machine, then use it to print a second. Then use them to print a third and fourth, and so on.

Cool.

3d printers have existed for a few years now, and are just now becoming mainstream (early adopters have had their hands on them for a while, but they’re becoming more and more well known and more widely accepted).

Unfortunately, that’s opened the door to darker uses of the technology, including a guy who downloaded 3d plans for a gun here, and printed one out of his house.

Fired it successfully, too.

That’s got the potential to be really, incredibly bad news, as it opens the door for a means of completely circumventing all gun control laws we currently have on the books, to say nothing of the fact that such a weapon, disassembled, would be all but impossible to detect via airport scanners.